Lord of The Mysterious Realms Chapter 637

After explaining everything to Fini, Jenkins pressed his left hand against the door. The Inexhaustible Flame streamed down his arm and spread across the surface, but the door seemed to be non-flammable. It remained utterly unchanged, even when completely engulfed in fire.

He drew back the flames, then slammed a fist radiating a frosty chill against the door. That, too, had no effect.

"Step back a little."

he instructed. Fini immediately ducked behind him, her view of his hands completely obstructed.

He took a deep breath, and a miner's lamp pieced together entirely from metal components materialized in his hand. A hair-thin, silver-blue beam shot from the lamp, striking a spot on the door no larger than the tip of his little finger. A shower of tiny parts clattered to the floor from the targeted area, but then the door, like a living creature, rapidly regenerated, sealing the hole in an instant.

That single, thin beam had consumed a twentieth of Jenkins's Spirit. To create an opening large enough for them to pass through, he would likely have to expend all of his Spirit, and even then it might not be enough—especially considering how quickly the door repaired itself.

"Now we're in real trouble."

He turned and peered into the pitch-black living room. In the oppressive darkness, he had the unnerving feeling that something was watching him.

"We'll get out of here soon. Until then, you need to stay right by my side. Can you do that?"

she replied in a small voice, pressing against his leg. Then she asked,

"My aunt and the others..."

"Right now, we can only look after ourselves."

She was a child of the slums, after all. Some things didn't need to be spelled out.

Since leaving was impossible for now, the only option was to figure out what was happening. Jenkins put on his monocle again. Beyond the black spiritual aura that permeated the entire house, he was surprised to see another glowing, statue-like object toward the rear of the building.

Based on the typical layout of homes in the Fidektri Kingdom, that location would be the master bedroom.

He wondered, handing his Purification Candle to Fini. He held the miner's lamp, and the two of them walked hand-in-hand toward the living room.

Outside, the blizzard raged on with no sign of letting up, the sky completely obscured by thick layers of cloud and fog. The house was silent and dark; even when Jenkins found the switch for the gas lamp on the wall, it wouldn't light.

They soon found the Stress family in the living room. The family was slumped against a wall, their eyes vacant as they stared at the cautious man and the young girl.

A closer look revealed that, with the exception of Mrs. Stress, the other four family members were little more than living corpses.

They were all ordinary people; despite their bizarre condition, they possessed no supernatural power. Mustering their courage, Jenkins and Fini approached Mrs. Stress, hoping to ask what had happened. But all she did was repeat the same phrase over and over:

"One must not be greedy."

"Fini, do the people who live here have a habit of keeping diaries?"

The girl started at his question, still not accustomed to him using her first name so familiarly.

"No. Besides my uncle, no one here can read or write."

"Right, that was an oversight."

He tapped his forehead, then glanced warily toward the location of the statue-like object. Reaching into his coat, he pulled out his cat, which had been squirming restlessly for some time.

"I've run into some trouble."

He murmured, "So don't go running off. If you see anything strange, you tell me. And don't touch anything. Got it?"

Chocolate nodded, then hooked his claws into Jenkins's shoulder, motioning for him to place him there.

Fini recalled the cat's gesture from the previous night, how it had seemed to invite her into the room. Her understanding deepened: the kind Mr. Williamette possessed truly formidable power.

Although six people lived in the house, it wasn't particularly large. There were three rooms that could pass for bedrooms; aside from the master bedroom, the other two were pitifully cramped.

Jenkins and Fini methodically searched every room except the master bedroom, discovering some strange signs. If his eyes weren't deceiving him, the impressions left in the two smaller bedrooms—which he hadn't entered on his last visit—suggested they had once held numerous expensive decorations. Similarly, while the furniture was old, it was clear that it had been quite costly when first purchased.

This starkly contradicted the image Jenkins and Fini had of an impoverished family.

More importantly, Fini's little cousin—an infant less than three months old—was gone. There was no trace of him anywhere, only an empty crib to prove he had existed at all.

In Jenkins's estimation, the Stress family had absolutely not been poor, at least as of a week ago. The leftover food scraps and the quality of the clothes in the closet attested to that. Yet, within a single week, all signs of their former comfort were vanishing, as if the family's fortunes had suddenly collapsed. This was a decline far too steep to be explained by simple gambling debts.

He grew intensely curious about the family's source of income, speculating whether Mr. Stress, an accountant in the Docklands, might have been secretly involved in illegal smuggling.

He and Fini searched the rooms again, even more meticulously this time, but their only discovery was a stack of IOUs hidden in the ceiling—all of them signed within the past week. Chapters fırst released on N0v3l.Fiɾe.net

Ultimately, it was a mishap that led to their next discovery.

It happened in the boys' bedroom, in front of the wardrobe. Fini was tugging on the hem of Jenkins's coat, and she pulled so hard that when Jenkins crawled out from under the bed, he nearly sent her tumbling.

He reacted instantly, steadying the girl, but the sudden movement nearly dislodged the cat from his shoulder. Displeased, Chocolate swatted the back of Jenkins's neck with his tail. The unexpected fluffy touch in the dark made Jenkins jump, and he instinctively lurched forward, unfortunately slamming his head right into the wardrobe door. The thin wood panel splintered, and his head plunged through, revealing a hole hidden at the bottom of the wardrobe.

It was in a perfect blind spot, impossible to see without crawling right inside.

There was nothing frightening in the hole, just a single diary lying there quietly.

"I really didn't know my uncle had a habit of keeping a diary."

Fini said, her face flushing, but Jenkins paid her embarrassment no mind.

It was a remarkably thick journal, bound in fine leather with a gilded clasp. The first entry was dated to the spring of the just-past year, 1865 of the Universal Calendar. While the entries weren't daily, it seemed he had recorded the week's events at least once every week.